After Sheila passed, she’d covered them with sheets, placing them next to each other in the barn. It seemed like the decent thing to do.The last thing she wanted was for the animals to get at them.In a normal situation—if a situation like this could ever be called normal—she would have left the bodies in place and waited for the police. But the circumstances were far from normal, and her instincts told her help wouldn’t be coming soon.She wasn’t sure if it would ever come.Meredith staggered outside into the field, letting the warm sun glance off her face. For a moment, she convinced herself that all of this was imagined, that she was lying in bed, about to awaken.But each time she glanced back into the barn, the sheets were still there, and so were the people underneath.Her closest neighbors—Ben, Marcy, and Sheila—were all dead, and Meredith was alone.She wandered back into Sheila’s house in a daze, her mind still reeling, and stepped through the kitchen and into the living room.
